PROPORTIONS AND VALUES IN AMERICAN 
HISTORY 



AN ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BEFORE 



Clje jB^eto iorli fltstoncal ^octetg 



ONE HUNDRED AND SECOND ANNIVERSARY 



Tuesday, November 20, 1906 



WILLIAM MILLIGAN SLOANE, LL.D. L.H.D. 

SETH LOW PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 




NEW YORK 
PRINTED FOR THE SOCIETY 

1906 



E 179 
.S62 

Copy 1 



PROPORTIONS AND VALUES IN AMERICAN 
HISTORY 



AN ADDRESS 

DELIVERED BEFORE 

C!)e Jieto lorfe Historical ^ocietp 

ON ITS 

ONE HUNDRED AND SECOND ANNIVERSARY 
Tuesday, November 20, 1906 

BY 

WILLIAM MILLIGAN SLOANE, LL.D. L.H.D. 

SETH LOW PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 




NEW YORK 
PRINTED FOR THE SOCIETY 

1906 



tl \'^^ 



Gift 

; 'Go 



V 



OFFICERS OF THE SOCIETY, 1906. 



PRESIDENT, 

SAMUEL VERPLANCK HOFFMAN. 

FIRST VICE-PRESIDENT, 

FREDERIC WENDELL JACKSON. 

SECOND VICE-PRESIDENT, 

FRANCIS ROBERT SCHELL. 

FOREIGN CORRESPONDING SECRETARY, 

ARCHER MILTON HUNTINGTON. 

DOMESTIC CORRESPONDING SECRETARY, 

GEORGE RICHARD SCHIEFFELIN. 

RECORDING SECRETARY, 

ACOSTA NICHOLS. 

TREASURER, 

CHARLES AUGUSTUS SHERMAN. 

LIBRARIAN, 

ROBERT HENDRE KELBY. 



EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. 



FIRST CLASS FOR ONE YEAR, ENDING 1907. 

ISAAC J. GREENWOOD, CLARENCE STORM. 

JAMES WILLIAM BEEKMAN. 

SECOND CLASS FOR TWO YEARS, ENDING 1908. 

CHANDLER DAVIS, WALTER L. SUYDAM, 

J. HOWARD VAN AMRINGE. 

THIRD CLASS FOR THREE YEARS, ENDING 1909. 

JOHN A. WEEKES, J. PIERPONT MORGAN. 

GEORGE R. SCHIEFFELIN. 

FOURTH CLASS FOR FOUR YEARS, ENDING 1910. 

F. ROBERT SCHELL, DANIEL PARISH, Jr., 
FREDERIC WENDELL JACKSON. 

DANIEL PARISH, Jr., Chairman. 

ROBERT H. KELBY, Secretary. 

[The President, Vice-Presidents, Recording Secretary, 
Treasurer, and Librarian are members of the Executive 
Committee.] 



TRUSTEES OF NEW BUILDING. 



SAMUEL VERPLANCK HOFFMAN, Chairman. 

FREDERIC WENDELL JACKSON, V ice-Chairman. 

ROBERT HENDRE KELBY. 

JAMES WILLIAM BEEKMAN. 

CLARENCE STORM, Secretary. 



Ladies and Gentlemen: 

Fellow-members of The New York Historical 
Society. There are two reasons for the profound 
sense of responsibility felt by me on this occasion. 
We are assembled for the first time in this splen- 
did though incomplete building, a fitting home for 
our work and our invaluable collections, a promise 
in enduring stone of greater exertion and wider 
usefulness. This splendid benefaction we owe in 
the main to the munificence of Mr. Henry Dexter, 
a public-spirited and far-sighted man, perpetuating 
by this gift the tender sentiments he feels for a 
beloved son cut ofT in his prime. We had hoped 
to welcome him to-day as the guest of honor, but 
though absent he is yet uppermost in our thoughts. 
We trust he will be spared to grace the more for- 
mal opening of the building on our next anniver- 
sary. Furthermore, you have selected a loyal son 
of Columbia University as your speaker. He and 
all who guide the destinies of that ancient and 
noble institution of learning see in this fact a har- 
binger of the closer union which should exist be- 
tween two great organizations in the same me- 
tropolis, cherished by the same community, and 
vitalized by the same indomitable purposes — to 



cherish science, to uphft the general inteUigence, 
and to preserve the foundations of society. With 
these two eminent facts clearly in view it has 
seemed well to consider the value of the work in 



which we are engaged. 



PROPORTIONS AND VALUES IN 
AMERICAN HISTORY 

The most specious assumptions are generally 
the most fallacious. Patriotism is not a virtue at 
all, unless it be disinterested. Otherwise, as Dr. 
Johnson said, it is the last refuge of the unmitigated 
scoundrel. It is difficult for many honest men to 
look you in the eye; it is the essential prerogative 
of the hardened criminal to stare the honest man 
out of countenance. Similarly it is untrue that the 
first history we should study is the present-day his- 
tory of our own land, and this for the simple reason 
that it is too hard. There are only two ways of 
approach to such a vital, difficult study — either 
through the past or through the comparison of the 
existing nation with its existing contemporaries: 
in the unity of history we know things partly 
through their origins, partly in their environment. 
To know ourselves historically we must study 
Genesis, but full Revelation in the present comes 
only to the patient observer of developments and 
proportions through all the intermediate scriptures 
or records. 

The scriptures of history: how long and yet 
how short they are ! Within them lie both the time 



lo Proportions and Values in American History 

and space of human experience, bottomless and 
shoreless — so, at least, considered by the very 
greatest sages, to whose sense and reason the sum 
of human trial and experiment and conclusion is 
boundless. On the other hand, as we are accus- 
tomed to measure, reckon, and compute, all true 
written history lies within a hundred centuries of 
time — less than a hundred and fifty successive pos- 
sible lives — and throughout most of its duration, 
within a continental mass of space covering the 
fringes only of the smallest continent of this globe, 
perhaps a ten-thousandth of the surface of this 
little earth. It is a reasonable estimate, that of all 
the beings in the form and semblance of man, those 
who were and those who w^re not inspired with 
the breath of divine life, all upward-gazing bipeds 
who have existed since the tertiary epoch of geol- 
ogy, perhaps, but not probably, ten thousand mil- 
lion millions in number, not more than one in a 
hundred thousand has lived under a system which 
by the broadest stretching of the term could be 
called historic. Of such petty dimensions, propor- 
tionately, is history and all that it embraces. 

And where, then, come into reckoning the 
Americans of these United States, with their three 
centuries of total life, their one century of national 
life, and their less than half a century of world- 
power? Exhausting with dizzy speed the mineral 



Proportions and lvalues in American History ii 

and agricultural resources of their great land until 
the end of coal, lumber, iron, and even water supply 
are already, if the stripping of forest and mine 
continue, in full sight; reaping and scattering 
wealth like Sybaris of old, their future bids fair 
to be as short as their past. It is a merry whirl; 
life is short, but poignant ; posterity has done noth- 
ing for us ; there are other peoples and other lands, 
and other continents to be exploited. Goethe's 
Earth Spirit might well sing of us: 

'Tis thus at the roaring loom of time, I ply, 

And weave for God the garment thou see'st Him by. 

If this material side of our life be His visible 
garment, His outward appearance, it is easy to con- 
clude what divinity is within and behind it. The 
gods of Hellenism were not more greedy, nor sen- 
sual, nor reckless, nor earthy. 

History, as appears most certain, may be stud- 
ied for its examples, or it may be studied to gratify 
intelligent curiosity, or it may be studied in a cold, 
calm, scientific spirit merely to establish fact — for 
all these excellent purposes it may be studied; but 
it must be studied because we are living history 
every. hour, and being here we must know how 
we got here in order not to repeat the mistakes 
of the fathers — to decide where we are going, and 
how we shall reach our goal. History does not 



12 Proportions and Values in American History 

repeat itself, but it does record and exhibit re- 
peated and accumulated human experience, with 
the reasons for success or failure. After the back- 
ward gaze, and only then, can we determine the 
forward outlook, the possibilities of the future. If 
we search for the examples and warnings in our 
own history, they are many. If we scrutinize it 
for interesting curiosities, there is no scant supply. 
If we seek for the critical and scientific determina- 
tion of truth, there is ample room. But above all, 
we must remember that every movement of na- 
tional life is a crisis of national existence, and in 
every critical moment we must choose this course 
or that ; unless we be mere '' dumb, driven cattle," 
we must know the past in order to exercise the 
right of choice. Either we choose for ourselves, 
or others choose for us. 

Accordingly, with a history actually so short, 
and an experience so relatively circumscribed, the 
value of our past must either be insignificant — as 
it is from the extensive view-point — or it must be 
significant and important from the intensive view- 
point. Which is it? Have causes here been con- 
stant and uniform, like the imagined laws of na- 
ture, or have they worked at different rates from 
those in older lands? Has the subject-matter been 
stubborn or fluid ? Have the resulting effects been 
disproportionately important, transcending the mere 



Proportions and Values in American History 13 

considerations of space and time? Does it pay to 
give such absorbing attention to American history 
— civil, political, institutional, local, genealogical? 
Are the interests at stake such as to justify the 
enormous outlay of energy? 

We choose the second horn of the dilemma, and 
answer: Beyond a peradventure, yes. Whatever 
the ages, far distant in the dim future, may say of 
our recklessness and our luxury, even if they be 
forced to moralize over our all too rapid evolution 
and decay, there must be written to our credit in 
the world's account book of history one monu- 
mental fact at least. The traveler by the Ionian 
Sea, who beholds the desolate sites of Tarentum, 
Sybaris, and Crotona, finds it well-nigh impossible 
to realize that there, more than two thousand years 
ago, were the most exquisite of ancient states — 
opulent, elegant, influential. The permanent con- 
tribution they made to history is, nevertheless, in- 
finitesimal, because, like ours, their private life was 
so interesting, their dilettante taste was so refined, 
their ease so charming. The one desire of the 
people — a Hellenic people, democratic, simple, and 
pious in its near origins — was material prosperity; 
to enjoy life, to revel in the gratification of the 
senses. For this purpose they intrusted the trou- 
blesome, exacting exercise of political power to one 
able man, who in return enjoyed not merely the 



14 Proportions and I'ahics in American History 

dignity of statesman and warrior, but a manifold 
share of temporal rewards. The name of tyrant 
was honored and honorable for centuries; only 
when the rude shocks of envious invaders shat- 
tered the social structure, and the system proved 
worthless for defense, did that name fall into exe- 
cration and become the reproach of later ages. 

Uneasy as an imperfect parallel with the states 
of Great Greece might, and perhaps should, make 
the American scholar and student; exact as is the 
resemblance of a New York voluptuary to the lux- 
urious Sybarite, of the sleek modern athlete to a 
Milo of Croton; for all this, the Kalmuk or other 
wild man of to-day, ruminating centuries hence in 
his philosophic mood from the summit of Mam- 
mon's temples on Manhattan island, must and will 
confess that the lesson of America differs in its 
value and permanence from that of all other then- 
exhausted and desert civilizations which shall have 
been either forgotten or known only in the cabinet 
of the coin collector. Here was a people, he must 
say, which developed and established institutions 
for themselves — a homogeneous, Calvinistic, An- 
glo-Saxon folk. Having set their system in opera- 
tion, they opened their doors to all peoples, nations, 
and tongues which dwelt upon the earth, and 
drilled the heterogeneous immigrants in the school 
of politics, enticing them to learn civil liberty and 



Proportions and Values in American History 15 

the practice of it; inculcating respect for religion, 
property, and law. Suppose the early stock to have 
succumbed before the temptation of money-getting 
by wage slavery; suppose them, during the life of 
ten generations, to have stripped the earth of life- 
munitions sufficient for a hundred; suppose the 
prevalence among them of all greed and reckless- 
ness; yet during this brief period of history there 
came from the uttermost ends of the earth the 
outcast, the oppressed, the ignorant ; the cowed and 
the suspicious of all races — and these millions were 
lifted into a knowledge of method and a habit of 
virtue which at that distant date, when the Kalmuk 
is the historian, were scattered all abroad over the 
teeming fields of Asia and Africa. The world is 
then the better for our having lived, though we 
knew not how to transmit our virtues to our own 
posterity. 

A pessimist has been well defined as one who 
of two possible evils chooses both. Now, it is easy 
to decry the men and the story of our democracy. 
A statesman is not necessarily a gentleman, nor 
are the gentlemen the only statesmen. Our begin- 
nings were almost fiercely aristocratic, when viewed 
from a certain angle. The political system under 
which we live continues this regime, in a sense, for 
it makes office not only a trust, but a privilege for 
a definite period. The important offices are secure 



i6 Proportions and Values in American History 

to their holders for a considerable term, and men 
succeed themselves in Washington so as to create 
a great political aristocracy of portentous dimen- 
sions. Should we desire to change men and meas- 
ures radically, it requires six years at least to do 
what Great Britain, permanently royal and aristo- 
cratic on the social side, but out-and-out democratic 
in politics, can accomplish in a few weeks. Until 
the election of Andrew Jackson, in 1828, all our 
presidents and most of our great officials were, 
with perhaps one exception, members of a landed 
gentry, and all were trained in public affairs, dig- 
nified in character and manners. From 1828 to 
1 86 1, the real leaders — like Clay, Calhoun, and 
Webster — were relegated to comparatively subor- 
dinate place, while shrewd politicians or dashing 
soldiers sat in the highest seats. From the out- 
break of the Civil War to the present day, plain 
men of plain origins have for the most part done 
the work for us which the same sort of men did 
for the revolutionary epoch of France and the Con- 
tinent. The Commonwealth has been managed by 
the common people for the extraction of riches 
from earth and land, the exploitation of both land 
and people for the creation of boundless money 
power. Most of this money power is well divided 
into moderate, and even modest, fortunes. The 
day laborer of a century ago would think the day 



Proportions and Values in American History 17 

laborer of to-day a pampered child of fortune, a 
swollen aristocrat. Some of the money power is 
concentrated in a few hands, which use it for per- 
sonal and class advantage, and this fact obscures 
the other. But, with this exception, the common 
folk have inherited the common earth, and the plu- 
tocracy is not even a governing oligarchy; in the 
main, it is a badly intrenched camp, to be despoiled 
by unscrupulous demagogues — free-booters, who 
endanger the public morals in the process. There 
never was a time or place where greater pity was 
due for the sorrows of the rich. 

Without venturing to prophesy, there seems 
little doubt that, religious, political, and civil equal- 
ity having been secured through strife and agita- 
tion, the contest for economic equality is under way. 
The words anarchy, communism, socialism, and 
paternal government have long been terms of hor- 
ror and dread to the thrifty, steady, moral citizen. 
The reason is not inherent in either the terms or 
what they mean; the two first are impossible, and 
could not last an hour among us. Socialism we 
have in full swing; inheritance taxes, pension sys- 
tem, prohibitive tariffs, exemption laws — all these 
are but examples of what individuals pay, with 
scarcely a murmur, for society at large, and even 
for classes which are but a privileged minority of 
society. Paternal government has full sway in the 



i8 Proportions and Values in American History 

post office, many of us wish we had it in the ex- 
press service; fewer still stand out for the state 
ownership of railways, and for the municipal own- 
ership of all public utilities in the cities, as we have 
always had municipal ownership of the water sup- 
ply. The terror of these terms is because the 
ignorant, shiftless, vicious, and desperate profess 
a nihilistic faith which they designate by those 
words ; declaring war on all good men under those 
watchwords and badges. 

Until the end of time, imported, wire-drawn, 
social philosophies will break in vain upon our 
Anglo-Saxon conception of property which in the 
last analysis is the cement of our society. The 
struggle for economic equality which is opening 
is not a struggle for theft in any sense. It is a 
part of our life, the mainspring of our vital energy. 
As Lowell sang: 

In vain we call old notions fudge, 
And bend our conscience to our dealing. 
The Ten Commandments will not budge, 
And stealing will continue stealing. 

The struggle for economic equality is a strug- 
gle for equal opportunity under the law — nothing 
more, nothing less. The plain people, ground be- 
tween the millstones of combination in capital and 
combination in labor, demand such a modification 
of the legal and social system as shall restore to 



Proportions and Values in American History 19 

every man the liberty to exert his powers, great 
or small, and to enjoy the fruits of his exertion, 
whether it be intellectual or physical. The great, 
numerous, hustling, strenuous class of those who 
already have something, little or much, ought not 
to stand aghast at such a movement, but should 
further it in every possible way; for the greater 
the division of property, the safer property is, in 
the numbers who stand ready to defend its guar- 
antees, the men who instinctively believe with John 
Locke that the state exists to safeguard individual 
property, and not that property is the creation of 
the state, and may be resumed at any moment by 
the creator of it. 

In the matter of historical epochs, it is impossi- 
ble to say in what relation thought or conduct, the- 
ory or legislation, ideals or struggles stand to each 
other — which is cause and which effect. Thought, 
theory, ideal at least display themselves on the eve 
of struggle, but they await the morrow of it for 
full exposition ; the will to fight is probably formed 
simultaneously with the sanction for fighting under 
the stimulus of vague, uncertain, indefinite re- 
straints, none the less real because we do not ac- 
curately know them. Just as thought and speech 
well up together in the man, so violence and sanc- 
tion for violence simultaneously declare themselves 
in the race. The right of revolution we hold among 



20 Proportions and Values in American History 

the most sacred. Policies are important during the 
calms of history ; in its storms they are either furled 
or shattered in the blast. We began our revolu- 
tionary agitation because we were hampered, and 
we appealed to a theory of the British constitution 
for peaceful redress; we changed our theoretical 
base three times in the struggle. We emerged an 
inchoate nation, but we would not admit it. We 
fought the War of 1812 for a national principle, 
but the Treaty of Ghent did not even mention it. 
We were democratic in theory, but we were ruled 
by a landowning gentry and had a limited suf- 
frage to and through the days of Jackson. When 
the strict construction party came into power, it 
perpetuated indirect taxation, chartered a new na- 
tional bank, and practised every form of " federal " 
usurpation. In thirty years we acquired, by con- 
quest, annexation, and exploration, a territory 
which was strictly national, and while from the 
outset we declared to other nations that we were 
not of Jthe family, yet as a nation we made national 
treaties, as a nation we fought France by sea, and 
wrested the free transit of the Mediterranean 
from the Barbary states; as a nation we brought 
Russia to terms on the question of colonizing the 
Pacific coast, and as a nation evolved from that 
success the Monroe Doctrine, which by diplomacy 
prevented the Holy Alliance from intervening, as 



Proportions and Values in American History 



21 



it intended, ostensibly to safeguard the Spanish 
colonies, really to give Russia further expansion 
in the Northwest and France an empire around the 
Gulf of Mexico. 

It was Heeren, the great Goettingen professor, 
who discovered the extraordinary fact that all na- 
tions of a certain type pass through identical stages 
of development, and in the process exhibit a unity 
of movement corresponding to the unity of the race. 
Each has its idiosyncrasy and does its work in its 
own way, but they all pass to their destinies by the 
same road and count the same milestones. Emerg- 
ing from the womb of the Holy Roman Empire, 
they secured some degree of religious liberty, then 
of political liberty, then of civil liberty. They were 
all dynastic, absolutist, and feudal in a high sense 
as late as the eighteenth century. Then came the 
nineteenth, and with it the lusty infant which is 
now the United States. As Englishmen we had 
completed the cycle of the three liberties, and as 
Britons we had the same survivals as our kinsfolk 
in political conviction, survivals not merely inter- 
esting, but invaluable as points of comparison in 
the evolution of the new age. 

For example, we knew that the " king can do 
no wrong." The ruler was presumed to be right- 
eous, and our system was just as sacred as that 
of kings. So we passed a Sedition Act, only to 



22 Proportions and Values in American History 

discover that the king could do wrong, that we no 
longer held either sedition or seditious libel to be 
a crime. The Federalist party was brought to the 
verge of ruin by that act. Yet at this hour, King 
Demos, the sovereign people can, in a widely dif- 
ferent sense, not be wrong legally ; and, though we 
murmur, we submit to a verdict which is estab- 
lished because a few persons, neither wiser nor 
better than those in the minority, have so voted as 
to create a majority, however insignificant its size. 
The vital difference between the old clear-cut per- 
sonal sovereignty and our present-day vague, un- 
certain, homeless sovereignty is that now the ruler 
is the servant of the ruled, to be censured, and 
even deposed, if he does not give satisfaction in 
his place. This reversal of mental attitude dates 
from the days of Jackson. It came not from ante- 
cedent conviction alone, but because of the fact that 
democracy at last was strong enough to demand 
its heritage. 

In Europe, the Congress of Vienna had strug- 
gled to restore the feudal concept that territorial 
boundaries are sacred, but the decision was un- 
popular. It contravened a new belief. Language, 
blood, geographical unity were now held to be the 
essence of developed and permanent nationality. 
This doctrine of nationality had overthrown Na- 
poleon, thereby capturing the imagination of Euro- 



Proportions and Values in American History 23 

peans, and they are still struggling to secure what 
the doctrine connotes. Along with democracy, it 
dominated the conduct of peoples and their rulers, 
because otherwise the royal servants must lose their 
situations. So, when democracy had asserted its 
predominance with us, the struggle began ; not for 
a national territory, we had that; nor for national 
policy, we had that; but for the close-knit, central- 
ized economic unity which was the full expression 
of nationality. Slavery lay athwart this tendency; 
to many it was a beneficent patriarchal social insti- 
tution, having no relation to politics; to many it 
was a denial of humanity, equality, and justice, 
an abomination. Proslavery men thought the 
negro an inferior human animal, to be kept down 
for his own good; antislavery men were sure he 
was a complete man, with original and natural 
rights of which he was cruelly deprived. The for- 
mer were federal. States rights, and anti-national; 
the latter carried the banner of the larger world, 
being centralizers and firm believers in complete 
nationality. What was the Union ? No one knew. 
What was the negro? There were two opinions. 
How could democracy express itself? Given its 
goal, what were its means? The final arbitrament 
was war, and war decided; the safeguard of lib- 
erty was intrusted to the nation and taken from the 
States. 



24 Proportions and Values in American History 

Economically, politically, socially, the nation, 
and even its great cities, have since attained an 
importance which would transcend that of the 
States were it not for the bulwark of the latter in 
the Senate, which still stands rock-fast, though 
often assaulted. The fact and doctrine of nation- 
ality have since the Civil War found their stanch- 
est defenders among the men of the new South, 
who, in their local governments, are effectually 
blocked by the negro question, and hence appeal 
incessantly, urgently, persistently to Congress for 
the material and moral support of the all-powerful 
white elements found elsewhere in the national 
population. They out-Herod Herod in their ea- 
gerness to share the economic unity of the country. 

With democracy established as the rule for in- 
ternal affairs and nationality as the regulator of 
foreign affairs, we have frankly entered the family 
of civilized states, all of which are impelled by the 
same motive powers. England has democracy un- 
der royal forms, Germany has democracy under 
imperial forms, France has democracy under par- 
liamentary forms, other states less completely un- 
der various forms; but all have substituted for 
dynastic unity the notion of national sovereignty. 
In such a loose federation of the world, under the 
sanction of international law, we do not hesitate to 
share responsibility openly, as we had before done 



Proportions and Values in American History 25 

in a furtive and apologetic, self-excusing way. 
While perhaps the value of American example 
and service might be overrated in comparison with 
the march of other nations yet it may be set very 
high. Even the Monroe Doctrine, misunderstood 
and despised, though feared, by the outside world, 
has come to mean nothing more than the estab- 
lishment of the American continent as the sphere 
of our influence exactly as the European powers 
have apportioned Africa among themselves, and 
would apportion the rest of the inhabited globe if 
they could. 

Democracy and nationality combined have at 
our hands produced a new public law for the civil- 
ized world. The states and statesmen who admin- 
ister it do so according to the character, habits, 
and needs of their respective peoples, but its bold 
outlines are everywhere the same. In our period 
of settlement we scorned the sacredness of terri- 
torial boundaries ; so now does the world. We held 
that the earth belongs to those who dwell on it 
only in so far as they make the best use of it; so 
now does the world. We took from England the 
contract theory of government, but we made its 
basis the consent of the governed; so now do all 
peoples. We held that the function of government 
was not merely international, in diplomacy and war, 
but domestic, in legislation and administration un- 



26 Proportions and Values in American History 

der democratic control ; so now do all nations, more 
or less imperfectly. We scorned privilege, declar- 
ing that common, not individual, well-being was 
the goal ; so now do all other peoples. Finally, we 
established the principle that ability is the only test 
of fitness to govern; opportunity must be opened 
regardless of birth, wealth, or influence. These 
are the headings of the chapters in which all con- 
temporary history is being written. Nationality 
in natural frontiers, expansion in lands unexploited 
or abused by those who dwell therein, the sover- 
eignty of the democracy — these concepts have re- 
placed the ambitions of monarchs whose passion 
for glory and strength is now the passion of demo- 
cratic nations. So far as Europe is concerned, this 
new international and world-wide policy has been 
accepted most directly from the hands of France 
and Great Britain, but chronologically each of these 
notions was initiated on our soil. 

When, therefore, we come to consider on the 
one hand the proportions of American history, we 
must admit its short duration, its illogical evolution, 
the reaction between theory and practice to produce 
a startling resultant, and above all the contradic- 
tions of profession and practice. On the other 
hand, its values cannot be overestimated because, 
as we regard its epochs, they have in swift succes- 
sion illustrated every article of the public law which 



Proportions and Values in American History 27 

is for the present and coming age accepted in civ- 
ilized states — gladly in the most enlightened, re- 
luctantly and grudgingly in the more backward. 
Nationality and democracy in their latest meaning, 
as the essential facts of advance, came to light here 
before others were conscious of their mighty com- 
pulsive power. The rest of the world has followed 
in the train. 



PROCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY 



PROCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY 

A meeting of The New York Historical Society was 
held in the Assembly Hall of the new building, 170 Cen- 
tral Park West, on Tuesday afternoon, November 20, 
1906, to celebrate the One Hundred and Second Anni- 
versary of the Founding of the Society. 

The proceedings were opened with prayer by the 
Rev. Francis Thayer Russell, D.D. 

The President addressed the Society as follows : 

Fellow-members of The New York Historical 
Society : 

To express gratitude in the name of the Society to 
our patron and benefactor, Mr. Henry Dexter, for his 
munificence is my first duty in addressing you, and also 
to those whose gifts have made this day a possibility. 

With a warm heart, generous spirit, and reverence 
for truth, Mr. Dexter decided to erect a fitting memorial 
to his son^ which should be a lasting monument to a lov- 
ing father's devotion to a son's memory. 

At first only intending to erect the basement and first, 
story of this building, with a temporary roof, his clear- 
sighted business instinct saw the dangers which might 
result to our collections in completing an edifice already 
occupied. With noble self-sacrifice he gave from his 
principal, additional funds to erect the walls of the com- 
pleted central portion of our main building. To-day we 
ask you here to see what has been accomplished with the 



32 Proceedings of the Society 

means at our disposal. We hope to go ahead and com- 
plete this portion shortly. 

It is with deep regret that I have to announce that 
our benefactor and patron, Mr. Henry Dexter, is unable 
to be with us to-day. Mr. Dexter was invited to be our 
only guest of honor. 

When other names are forgotten, when the names of 
your officers and building committee will only be a mat- 
ter of record, the name of Henry Dexter will stand out 
as a benefactor to our Society and American History. 

Nor must we forget to-day those who have gone 
before, our Founders and their successors, to whose 
wisdom and guidance we owe our prosperity. I know 
that the name of John Alsop King, President from 1887 
to 1900, at once occurs to you. It was he who acquired 
this land for you, securing by personal effort the funds 
for its purchase. After him came my father, who, had 
he been spared for a few years, would have had the deep 
gratification and honor of dedicating this building. It 
was one of the great problems he set before him in his 
declining years, to place this Society on such a firm foun- 
dation that it should be secure for the future. 

This building has been planned and erected with one 
aim in view. It has been built as the dignity of the work 
demanded, and having in mind that wise provision in our 
charter; that we can have no debts, we have only built as 
our funds permitted. It is better to build a little and do 
it right rather than a great deal and do it meanly. We 
are building for the future, and in this day of hastily 
built buildings we must expect criticism. 

Our Society has too long hid its head; let us now, 
without in the slightest departing from our old traditions, 
claim for ourselves the position we are entitled to. In 
the past thirty years many patriotic societies have come 



Proceedings of the Society ^;^ 

into being — we welcome their advent — they are doing a 
noble work ; but do the members of those societies realize 
that their very existence depended on the records preserved 
and made accessible by this Society? Their patriotism, 
I am sure, now that their attention is called to the fact, 
will show itself by enrolling their names on our books as 
members. 

Let us hope in the years to come, instead of incom- 
plete specialized libraries, we may welcome them to our 
hall as their headquarters for meetings, for information 
from our records and books, and for cooperation, that 
duplication of books and waste of energy and money may 
be prevented. 

This afternoon a Fellow-member, Professor Sloane, 
of Columbia University, has kindly consented to address 
us. It is a pleasure to welcome him here to-day at this 
first assemblage in our future home, as symbolic of a 
nearer approach to that seat of learning which is doing 
so much for American History. Here in the future we 
hope to offer attractive quarters where students may im- 
bibe love of country and patriotism from the precious 
records of the past, cooperating with all earnest workers 
for the cause of historical truth. 

The Anniversary Address was then delivered by 
William Milligan Sloane, LL.D., L.H.D., Seth Low 
Professor of History in Columbia University, entitled, 
" Proportions and Values in American History." 

Upon its conclusion, the Reverend George R. Van 
De Water, D.D., was recognized, and addressed the So- 
ciety as follows : 

All the way from our founder, John Pintard, down 
to our honored presidents, John Alsop King and Dean 



34 Proceedings of the Society 

Hoffman, the father of our present President, and our 
great benefactor, Henry Dexter, who is still with us, we 
are thankful to say, eminent citizens have managed the 
affairs of our Society. We should have a feeling of 
pride that we live in this great city, where there are so 
many great men engaged in noble pursuits and pro- 
fessions. This Society has always numbered among its 
members some of the noblest families in the city. It does 
so still. We have been more or less like lights under a 
bushel, but now, through the unusual and munificent gift 
of Mr. Dexter, we shall be like a city set on a hill, and 
in the future The New York Historical Society cannot 
be hid. We have been doing good work, or we would 
not be here to-day. Our officers have been doing the 
best they could with the facilities at their command. 

It is not generally known, as it should be, that this 
is not the New York City Historical Society, but that 
it is The Nezu York Historical Society. Now that we 
are in this building, it is impossible for us to express 
our gratitude to the benefactor of this Society for his 
gift that enables us to be here. Sufficiently to say our 
" Thank you " is not possible. The members of this 
Society should strive to make its interests and objects 
known to the people of this community, so that we may 
have increased membership and support, and at our 
month!)' meetings we may have goodly numbers present. 
Those who live in this cultured neighborhood may now 
feel that they have something to do besides going to places 
of amusement — that instead they may often come to this 
place, where they can stimulate their intellects and learn 
to be loyal to their city, state, and country. 

I move you, in no ordinary way, but with special 
emphasis, that our thanks be given Professor Sloane, 
and that a copy of his inspiring and able address on 



Proceedings of the Society 35 

" Proportions and Values in American History " be re- 
quested for permanent record in the archives and that 
it be published by this Society. 

The exercises were closed with a benediction by the 
Rev. Dr. Russell. 

Extract from the Minutes. 

AcosTA Nichols, 
Recording Secretary. 



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